Cornies: Doing the musical math

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When Orchestra London’s creditors meet next week to formally wind down the affairs of the once-proud cultural jewel, they’ll be looking at a black hole of nearly half a million dollars in liabilities.

According to initial estimates, the value of the corporation’s assets, including a music library and the instruments it owns, is worth only about $47,000, leaving a deficit of roughly $441,000.

Do the math. Should those early estimates stand up against the possibility that additional creditors may yet show up, we’re talking less than 10 cents on the dollar, even if the full estimated value of those assets is realized.

The path from the joys of the concert hall to the profound grief of bankruptcy has already been a long and difficult one, especially for the musicians once employed by the soon-to-be-defunct corporation. Many have experienced at least a few of Kübler-Ross’s stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression. They’ve valiantly tried to keep their art and spirits alive through #WePlayOn Musicians, a hashtag that has served to reflect both their dignity and determination.

The final irony in their journey may have come two weeks ago, when, faced with the prospect that too much time would elapse to allow them to qualify for benefits under the federal wage earner protection program (WEPP), they decided to fund the orchestra’s bankruptcy themselves. To do so, they took out a $15,000 loan.

The former directors of the corporation, meanwhile, have remained nearly mum and invisible, though board chair Joseph O’Neill did accede to the musicians’ plan to finance the bankruptcy in a manner timely enough for them to access the WEPP benefits. It’s possible that, even after bankruptcy, the former Orchestra London directors may yet face personal liability for last year’s financial disaster, according to a source familiar with how the principle of subrogation applies to corporate bankruptcies.

And it turns out that Orchestra London’s imminent burial, in the legal sense, is not the first time it’s brushed up against financial ruin over the past 15 years.

According to records at the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada, the orchestra narrowly avoided a similar fate in 2000, when it brought forward a proposal to deal with more than $483,000 in debts to more than 50 creditors.

In February of that year, news stories focused on an emergency loan by the city to the orchestra of slightly more than $100,000. Not widely reported or discussed during the month that followed was the fact that the orchestra’s board made a last-ditch effort to stay afloat with a commercial proposal in bankruptcy court.

The astonishing deal they cut, according to Tim Carson, the trustee who handled the proceeding: Creditors would be paid in the form of advertising in future Orchestra London concert programs. The debts listed on the schedule for creditors ranged from $20 for a courier company, to more than $12,000 owed to a musicians’ pension fund, to more than $16,000 for concert advertising. It took four years, but the orchestra was eventually discharged from those commitments. It was a near-death experience.

Asked about what next week’s initial meeting of orchestra creditors will bring, London bankruptcy trustee John Adamson was somewhat reticent. He agreed to take on the file on behalf of the musicians, he said, because some things are just “the right thing to do.” And that’s also the reason, he said, as to why his firm will handle the proceeding at about a third of the cost that London city council was given last December, when it was asked by the orchestra for a special grant to pay for the bankruptcy.

The former orchestra’s musicians, meanwhile, continue to wrestle with the process of re-invention. Just as news media are facing a great disruption, never to return to the business models of yesteryear, so too the days of packed 1,500-seat halls for orchestral music in mid-sized cities such as London may be vestiges of a bygone era, thanks in part to technology.

So be it. Those facts haven’t yet dampened the musicians’ enthusiasm for their art, nor the interest with which it has been received, even if the audiences are smaller.

And given the speed with which the Orchestra London bankruptcy could be wrapped up, it’s not inconceivable that, by sometime next month, a new organization might officially unfold in its place.